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Microsoft acknowledges value of open source

Ever wonder how Microsoft feels about open source? You probably remember Gates' comparison of FOSS to communism, and how the FOSS movement was threatening to undermine the vast IP empire that America depends on to keep itself on top. Needless to say, then, I was surprised to see the following statement on one of the Visual C Express about pages: "Learn from the pros by looking through – and modifying – the source to commercial games such as Allegiance and Quake."

Looks like ol' Carmack's committment to FOSS is paying off here. Even the king of proprietary software is acknowledging the potential cultural and intellectual value of free source code. Isn't it amusing that Microsoft is using FOSS as a selling point for a proprietary IDE that will, in all probability, be used almost exclusively for creating proprietary apps?

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Biography

Matt Barton is an English professor at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. He is an advocate of free software, wikis, and the Creative Commons. He also studies and writes about videogames and computing history. Matt also has blogs at Armchair Arcade, Gameology, and Kairosnews.